It is known to use nail guns to attach roofing material such as tarpaper to the roof of a structure. It is also known to use small plastic caps to engage and hold tarpaper on the roof. Many such caps include nails prepositioned in the caps. A roofer will typically use a hammer and manually drive the prepositioned nail into the roof, securing the cap over the tarpaper in the process. This is a time consuming, laborious and expensive process. It is not easy for a roofer to stand on an inclined roof, and manually hold a supply of such caps and at the same time secure them into the roof structure.
It is known to provide cap feeding devices for employment with nail guns. These cap feeding devices automatically place a cap under the nail gun and thereafter the nail gun drives a nail downwardly through the cap into the underlying structure. However, there are many drawbacks to such conventional cap feeding devices. In many cases they are large, bulky, hard to handle, and in the end, are expensive. In many cases the combined nail gun and cap feeding device is so heavy that the weight alone makes it difficult for the average operator to handle and efficiently use.
One example of a conventional combination staple gun and cap feeding device is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,302,310 and entitled “Staple and Nail Gun Assembly, Cap Fitting Device for Staple or Nail Gun, and Cap Assembly.” This assembly includes a container for receiving the caps and the container is fixedly connected to a rear end of the handle of the staple gun. A base is connected between the lower end of the container and the nose portion of the staple gun. The caps are filled in a passageway formed in the base and moved by a pneumatic device so that the caps are fed into a cap holding chamber located beneath the nose portion of the staple gun, one cap at a time. In this case, the position of the container makes the whole assembly bulky and difficult to handle.
There has been and continues to be a need for a simple, lightweight and easy to handle combination staple gun and cap feeding device.